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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23483791">The Life I Never Lived</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elara_Moon/pseuds/Elara_Moon'>Elara_Moon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aftermath of Possession, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant, Psychological Horror, Statement Fic, Suicidal Ideation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:22:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,536</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23483791</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elara_Moon/pseuds/Elara_Moon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The statement of Elias Bouchard regarding his experiences with the being known as Jonah Magnus.</p><p>Or, Jonah Magnus died, and Elias Bouchard didn't.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas (implied)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>125</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Life I Never Lived</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Fair warning, I am nowhere near up to date on canon. I'm still on season two. I have no idea when this happens or exactly how it came to be. But I read <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/21048713"> (it takes a lot of medicine) to make it through the wintertime</a>, and was just like hey, you know what, that's a good idea, although I took a much angstier approach to it, with Elias having been aware the entire time. I'm pretty sure I've seen a couple other stories with this idea floating around, too, but I just had a lot of Feelings about it.</p><p>Also, I am American. I did my best to make it sound authentically English, but there are probably still mistakes.</p><p>The character death tag is just for Jonah, James Wright, and Gertrude. Check the end notes for details on the sexual content and sexual assault tags.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>[CLICK]</p><p>
  <strong>Archivist</strong>
</p><p>Statement of Elias Bouchard, regarding…</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Elias</strong>
</p><p>Let’s just say… Hah. My experiences with the being known as Jonah Magnus over the past twenty… twenty-seven years? Yeah. God, I’m twenty-two years older now, I’m getting old. I never expected to have to deal with that, you know. I know what happened to James, I know--</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Archivist</strong>
</p><p>Elias. Sorry, but--</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Elias</strong>
</p><p>Ah. Right. I’m supposed to… tell the story in order. Right. [sigh] I still can’t believe you want me to give a statement.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Archivist</strong>
</p><p>Er, well, it’s important. I feel it should be recorded. ...You don’t <em>have</em> to.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Elias</strong>
</p><p>No, no, it’s fine. I guess you’re right.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Archivist</strong>
</p><p>...All right, then. Statement recorded direct from subject, 26 September, 2018. Statement begins.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Elias</strong>
</p><p>I’m… not sure where to begin, honestly. I’ve always wondered how statement givers decide what to include and what not to include. What things are relevant, really? Yes, sorry, I’m getting off topic.</p><p>Well, I guess the important part is once I joined the Institute. You know most of my credentials already, of course, so I don’t need to tell you about graduating from university or the like. Although Jonah absolutely lied to you about my age once and you didn’t even notice.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Archivist</strong>
</p><p>What? He did? When?</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Elias</strong>
</p><p>You went to ask him about case number… 9720406, I believe. Nathaniel Thorp’s statement.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Archivist</strong>
</p><p>Oh, the man who self-harmed while giving his statement as proof, in… 1972, right? Eli -- er, sorry. Jonah…? Magnus?</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Elias</strong>
</p><p>I don’t care what you call him. It’s fine, I resigned myself to him stealing my name along with my body. But I suppose for clarity’s sake, it would be better to call him by his own name.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Archivist</strong>
</p><p>Right. ...Jonah said that -- he was working at the Institute as a filing clerk at the time.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Elias</strong>
</p><p>Yes. Which was blatantly untrue, seeing as I was five at the time.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Archivist</strong>
</p><p>Oh. Well, er. Sorry.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Elias</strong>
</p><p>[sigh] It’s fine, it’s not like you expected your boss to be lying to you.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Archivist</strong>
</p><p>And we’ve gotten off-topic again. Please start at the beginning. When you joined the Institute, you said?</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Elias [statement]</strong>
</p><p>Right, yes. So, I started working for the Magnus Institute in 1991, at the age of twenty-four. It -- well, I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors that I was a pothead in university. Which is entirely true, of course, but in my defense, it was the eighties. Everyone was a pothead in university. Anyway, I joined the Institute for lack of more serious options, basically. I was a pothead, and the Institute was a bunch of conspiracy theorists pretending to be serious academics. It seemed to fit.</p><p>I was actually a filing clerk, so Jonah didn’t lie about that, at least. There’s nothing much I can say about that job, really. It’s probably one of the most mundane jobs in the Institute, and it isn’t really relevant. The important part is James Wright. My boss, the Head of the Institute. James was older, probably in his fifties or sixties, and always very put together -- suits, posh accent, everything. But he was surprisingly friendly; told all of his employees to call him by his first name. I’m sure you know what he would have been like.</p><p>I didn’t think much of him at first. My job didn’t really bring me into contact with him that often. I do remember thinking he was surprisingly attractive, quite the silver fox. Ugh. His mannerisms made his age seem refined, rather than just old. Probably, my attraction is -- well, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. The odd thing was that, although my job didn’t cause us to interact hardly at all, maybe a year after I started at the Institute, James started searching me out on his own. He was perfectly nice about it, very polite, and it took me a while to realize that it was on purpose, he didn’t just happen to run into me all the time. As I was saying before, it was probably my attraction to him that caused me to think that he was… flirting with me. For the record, no, I did not sleep with him. Just want to make that clear. I had left off the drugs, mostly, after uni, and I certainly wasn’t so foolish as to sleep with my boss.</p><p>James was very subtle about it. He never made any advances direct enough that I could actually dissuade him from it. There were weird looks sometimes, almost hungry? But only when I wasn’t looking, so I only ever caught glimpses of those looks. For the most part, James was just polite. So I was polite back. Talking to James was always stressful. Even besides the fact that he was my boss and I had to watch what I said lest he fire me, something about him was just… off putting. Creepy. I’m ashamed to say that I just interpreted it as him being kind of pervy. I mean, I thought he was the kind of man to hit on his employees who were half his age. That kind of personality comes with a level of unavoidable skeeviness.</p><p>Overall, it wasn’t a big deal. It didn’t affect my life all that much, and it didn’t go anywhere until five years after I’d joined the Institute. 7 May 1996. I remember that date very well, for all that I didn’t know it would be special at all when the day started. It began as I was leaving the Institute that evening. I had said all of my farewells and whatnot, but I hadn’t quite left the Institute when James called my name and came up to me. I turned to him, and the first thing that struck me was that he was smiling. It was not a good smile. I can’t explain quite why, even now, but just seeing that smile made an uncomfortable shiver go down my spine. It made me want to flee, just run out the Institute right then. Unfortunately, I was trapped by social niceties and manners.</p><p>James asked me to go somewhere with him, and stupidly, I was almost relieved. I thought that meant he was just finally making a move, trying to get me to sneak off and have a snog in a closet or whatever. I figured that explained the creepy smile. That presented its own set of problems, of course. I immediately made up a pros and cons list for going with him. It was quickly apparent that the cons outweighed the pros both in number and in severity. The pros were shallow things, like the fact that James was attractive. The cons were things like, he was my boss and that was a terrible idea, the fact that he was married -- or, well, now I know that he was never actually married, but he wore a ring, so I thought he was at the time.</p><p>Anyway, so I tried to let him down gently -- you know, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea’, etcetera. And James… laughed. It wasn’t the startled laugh of somebody who’d genuinely had their words taken out of context and thought the misunderstanding was funny. It was condescending. Patronizing. It got my hackles up immediately; I felt like I was being mocked. At the time, I kind of thought he was deriding the fact that I thought he’d ever want to sleep with me. James assured me that that wasn’t what he meant, that I didn’t have to worry, and that -- I remember these words exactly because they turned out to be such a lie -- ‘I was safe with him’. Hah. James then explained that there was something he wanted to show me, which he thought I’d find interesting.</p><p>I didn’t really want to know. I just wanted to go home. But James was looking at me expectantly, and he was my boss, and… Well. I ended up going with him. I remember having the thought that I didn’t want to be alone with him, but I figured it’d be fine -- we were about the same height, and I was fit but so was he, but then, I was twenty years younger than him. He wouldn’t be able to overpower me, surely. And that was even if he had any ulterior motives. So I went with him, and he brought me down into the tunnels under the Institute. We didn’t go through the Archives, actually -- I guess he wasn’t willing to risk being caught by Gertrude. Even though I don’t think she was there at the time. Either way, there was another entrance to the tunnels, and we went down that way. And it was really, really dark. You know what the tunnels are like, of course.</p><p>James had a torch, but it wasn’t very strong, and he kept it trained mostly on the floor just in front of us. The darkness all around us felt thick, almost tangible, pierced only by the thin beam of the torch. It felt heavy, like it was pressing in on me. I wouldn’t have considered myself easily scared, but that got to me. I ended up clutching James’ arm, absolutely certain that if my grip slipped, we’d get separated, and I’d end up alone in the gloom with whatever monsters were lurking down there. My grip on his arm was so tight he must have been losing feeling in it, but James didn’t complain. Now, thinking about the whole thing, I almost want to laugh. If only I’d known that the very thing whose arm I was holding onto so desperately was one of those same monsters. Arguably even the most dangerous. I mean, obviously it’s difficult to compare any of the Fourteen to each other and say with certainty that any are worse than any of the others. That’s the point of Fear Entities; they’re all scary, they’re all equally horrifying in different ways. But at least the Dark’s and the Buried’s presences in those tunnels was only the usual, passive malignance. James was actively malicious towards me, personally. I’ve never experienced the fate of one targeted by the Dark or the Buried, but given what did happen to me, I -- I almost think it would have been better if I’d been separated from James after all. Not that that could have happened.</p><p>Sorry, I got distracted again. I remember, the darkness seemed so oppressive, I felt like it would be a bad idea to make any more noise than absolutely necessary. Not just that it would be dangerous, but that it would be… wrong. Improper. Rude. But I was getting very scared, and I wanted to know what was going on, so I asked James, in a hushed voice, if the tunnels were what he’d wanted to show me. James chuckled, a lot like the laugh from earlier, condescending. But I was too scared to get angry. He said no, the tunnels were just the best way to get to what he wanted to show me. And then he went silent again. At the time, I suppose I figured he also felt the oppression of the darkness, and that was why he wasn’t talking. Now, I think he just didn’t care to. I wouldn’t be important soon.</p><p>We went down several staircases. On the first one, I stepped carefully, but didn’t let go of my grip on James’ arm, making it a bit awkward for both of us. I think that was the first time he got annoyed about it, but he didn’t say anything. It turned out to be a good thing, because about halfway down, I felt a sudden shove on my back, and almost toppled down the stairs face first. James caught me, though, with surprising strength. I looked backwards frantically, trying to see what had happened, certain that something had pushed me, but it was too dark to see anything at all. James patted my shoulder with his free hand, the one not attached to the arm I was strangling, and tried to soothe me, talking about how I must have stumbled and it was okay, the stone stairs could be difficult, and so on. His voice was even and gentle, but when I looked over, I could just see his face in the light from the torch, and he was staring back over his shoulder with a very cold look on his face.</p><p>Nothing else happened on the way.</p><p>Eventually, we made it to our destination, which I now know as the Panopticon. I’m not sure why he brought me there, actually? It’s not like he needed his original body. I suppose he probably wanted to be very sure that nobody could happen across him. Anyway, I saw the -- the body. Jonah Magnus’ body, though I obviously didn’t recognize it as such at the time. And I freaked out, as normal people are wont to do when they encounter dead bodies. I kind of screamed and turned to James. It suddenly seemed very clear to me that James had done this on purpose; the body was what he’d intended to show me all along. I remember seeing James’ expression, this… awful smile. After that, things get hazy. I don’t quite remember it clearly. I don’t know if it’s Jonah’s fault, or my own brain repressing it, as often happens with trauma. Either way, I think I’m grateful. What followed was bad enough. I know -- you said you thought I was dead, and that makes sense, but honestly, this fits in much better with the kind of horrible things the Fourteen like to do. It’s so very rare that they’re kind enough to simply kill their victims.</p><p>I didn’t know what happened at the time, but I suppose I should explain. It took me a while to figure it all out, since unfortunately Jonah hardly went around explaining it all the time. As I know it now, Jonah Magnus, the founder of the Magnus Institute, had become an Avatar of the Eye at some point in his lifetime, and had then spent the next two hundred years or so stealing other people’s bodies to keep himself alive. There were a couple of steps to that, most of which aren’t really relevant. Excuse me if I’d rather not tell anybody else exactly how it works. The main part, anyway, is the eyes. Putting his eyes into the body he wants to possess. I… Oh, god. I still have his eyes. I still...</p><p>[sound of harsh, quick breathing, then a deep breath]</p><p>Right. So obviously, James Wright was actually being possessed by Jonah at the time I knew him.</p><p>Anyway. I think I tried to run, but obviously I failed. The next thing I remember is waking up. Except it wasn’t really waking up; it was like, one moment I wasn’t aware, and then the next, I was. I was lying on the ground, and it was hard and cold, so cold I could feel it seeping through my clothing. My eyes opened, entirely without my input, and my body sat up the same way. And I could hear somebody… talking, I thought. I’m not sure how or why, but I realized near immediately what it was: I could hear somebody else’s thoughts. I didn’t recognize the voice, but it seemed obvious to me who it was. James. He laughed, out loud, using my voice, my mouth, and then started, ah. Examining my body. He seemed very appreciative of it. There’s something so disturbing about feeling your body move, but not being able to control it. I could feel everything; I could feel the cold, I could feel the movements of my body as one normally would, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t affect anything at all. I couldn’t even move my eyes. I couldn’t even close my eyes. Whatever Jonah saw, I saw. I couldn’t turn it off.</p><p>I panicked. I’m pretty sure I had a full-blown breakdown right then and there, and I’m not ashamed of it. But no matter how panicked I was, I couldn’t. Do. <em>Anything.</em> It was like there was a screen between me and my body. I just couldn’t get to it. I wanted to scream, cry, beat myself against whatever wall there was. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything. I was trapped inside my own mind, an unwilling passenger as Jonah Magnus took over my life and slowly made it into his. You know, I don’t think he knew I was there? If he did, he never once so much as acknowledged me, much less spoke to me directly. I could hear his thoughts, but he couldn’t hear mine. I guess it’s fitting; it’s exactly the Eye’s style. Me, trapped there, watching and experiencing with no control over anything. And Jonah, unknowingly being watched himself, a silent voyeur on his entire life.</p><p>I’m sure I got the worse end of the deal. There are no words to express the horror of being in your own body while somebody else controls it. As soon as I thought I might have gotten used to it, Jonah would, probably unknowingly, find a new, horrible thing to do in my body. Like once Peter Lukas realized that ‘Elias’ was the same person ‘James’ had been. They -- well. I suppose I shouldn’t go into too much detail, as I doubt you want to know about either of their sex lives.</p><p>[sound of somebody coughing]</p><p>Yeah, exactly. It wasn’t exactly a great experience, either. I’ll just… leave it at that. I don’t want to dwell on it anyway.</p><p>Then, after the entire -- what should I call it? Body horror? Whatever. Even aside from the experience of being trapped in my own body, it meant that I had to simply watch as Jonah did, frankly, terrible things. I couldn’t do anything to stop it. Even knowing exactly what he was planning, there was nothing I could do. I was actually hoping that Gertrude would succeed in killing him -- I didn’t know exactly what would happen if she did destroy Jonah Magnus’ original body. If that meant I’d die, if it meant everyone working for the Institute would die. I didn’t really care, by then. I’d rather be dead, I thought. All of the employees… That, obviously, would have been a tragedy. But honestly, knowing everything that Jonah did throughout those twenty years, it was a bit difficult to care anyway. The Fourteen regularly kill so many people.</p><p>Not that it mattered. Gertrude failed. After a fifty year long reign of terror -- I say that jokingly, but she really was terrifying; even Jonah was hilariously scared of her -- Gertrude died. I kind of figured -- well, no. It’s not important. Just… I’m glad you killed him.</p><p>I guess I should talk about that, huh? You already know what happened, of course, and I’m sure it’s covered in other statements. You were even recording at the time, right? So I won’t rehash the sordid details. But there’s a couple of things that are important to this statement, I guess. Obviously, when Jonah Magnus died, I didn’t. I got control of my body back. And I kept, along with… Jonah’s eyes, his status as an Avatar. It’s a little weird, because I distinctly remember James Wright being dead after Jonah switched from his body to mine. Maybe it’s different because Jonah died instead of just abandoning my body, I don’t know. I can easily picture losing one’s Avatar status being a death sentence, honestly. The Eye may be the least violent of the Fourteen, but it’s still an evil fear god. Anyway, so I’m still alive. And an Avatar. I’m sure you understand how… ‘thrilled’ I am about it.</p><p>And there’s also the thing about the ‘beating heart of the Institute’, as Jonah called it. Jonah said that if he died, so would all of the Institute’s employees because of it. He wasn’t lying, exactly. But whenever he switched bodies, he had to switch over all of his… abilities, too. I don’t know if it was a conscious decision to do so or if it was automatic with the body stealing, but it happened either way. So fortunately for all of the employees of the Institute, when Jonah died, I regained control of my body, and took over… ‘admin rights’, I guess you could say. Maybe it’s just an inherent part of whatever Jonah was doing when he stole people’s bodies, or maybe the Eye thinks it’s funny. Impossible to tell, really.</p><p>So now my life is tethered to the Institute, and the Institute’s employees. I mean, it has been for the past twenty-two years, of course, I just never really considered it my problem, then. I was just a passenger being dragged along as Jonah went about his life. Now that it definitely is my problem… I don’t know what to do, really. I don’t know how to transfer it without doing the whole body stealing thing, which I certainly have no intention of ever doing.</p><p>...Anyway. I think that’s all. Is there anything else you want me to cover?</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Archivist</strong>
</p><p>No. No, I think that’s enough. Statement ends.</p><p>[CLICK]</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The sexual content and assault tags are for the implication that Jonah-as-Elias and Peter had sex with Elias also there in his own body as an unknown, not consenting third party. But it's very vague, so I don't think it warrants a full non-con archive warning.</p><p>The amount of things I don't actually know and therefore was winging stresses me out. Please excuse any weird things. Like, I have no idea if there should be a post statement followup section, and honestly I'm not sure I care. Also, I don't know what Jonah (and so probably this OG Elias) calls the Entities. Insert shrug emoji.</p><p>I was looking through the wiki trying to figure out a timeline, and realized that Nathaniel Thorp gave his statement in 1972... and supposedly James Wright took over as head of the Institute in 1973. So I very much do not believe that Elias was already working for the Institute at the time. As such, I went with him joining the Institute in '91. Jonalias was lyin'.</p><p>I tried to kind of imply here that Elias is Extremely Not Okay. But I don't think a lot of it would get through to his actual spoken words.</p><p>Thanks for reading! Let me know if you liked it with a kudos or comment!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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